One
of
the greatest advertising campaigns in British television history, the
Cinzano
ads saw a perfect pairing of leading actor and actress, performing
brilliantly-written
30-second masterpieces of comedy. Leonard played the pretentious oaf,
ostentation
personified, against Joan Collins’ prim, straight-laced
lady-of-society,
Melissa. All ten commercials revolved around the old music-hall trick
of
the bungling fool always finding a way to, inadvertently of course,
throw
his drink over the girl, and never realising he had done it. During
the mid-1970s the Italian drinks manufacturer Martini was busy
marketing
their product, specifically aimed at the younger generation. Their
adverts
featured trendy, wealthy, twenty-somethings on private beaches, private
yachts, and basically enjoying a lifestyle not accessible to the vast
majority
of their audience. Cinzano decided to make a humorous spoof on these
commercials.
Sean Connery and Woody Allen were pencilled in to be the stars, but
when
top British film director Alan Parker was brought in to direct the
first
three, the scripts were quickly discarded. (It is interesting to note,
however, that the success of the Cinzano adverts actually resulted in
an
increase in the sales of Martini, as people were so engrossed in the
commercials,
they forgot what product the stars were advertising and, as Martini was
the market leader, it was assumed this was the product being promoted).
It was Parker and art director Ron Collins who cast Leonard and Joan,
via
the Collett, Dickenson, Pearse & Partners advertising agency, a
company
with a reputation for using celebrities. The company had previously
used
Leonard Rossiter for a Parker Pens' commercial in 1977, in which he
played
a traffic warden. “I remember going round to Leonard's house," Parker
recalls,
"and we agreed the scripts were absolute rubbish. So Leonard said 'What
I'd like to do is the old music-hall joke', and we said 'What's that?',
so he picked up his cup of tea as we were sitting there in his living
room,
and he looked at his watch, turning the cup over. And we said
'Yeah,
that'll be a good joke, especially if it happens to be Joan Collins
you're
spilling it on!' “. The
first
commercial, promoting the launch of the first of the Cinzano family of
vermouth aperitifs, Cinzano Bianco, was broadcast during 1978, and was
an instant success. Alan Parker directed the next two commercials,
launching
Cinzano Rose and Cinzano Secco, with art direction again by Ron
Collins.
Leonard choreographed his every move and had much involvement in the
scripts
and gags. By the end of 1979, the ads had become firm favourites with
the
viewing public, who never tired of seeing them over and over again.
Joan
Collins remembers: "When ITV went on strike viewers wrote in
complaining
not about the lack of programmes but about not being able to see Joan
and
Leonard!". But the best was yet to come. The two
actors were reported to be paid £30,000 each for the series of
commercials.
Hugh Hudson stepped in to direct the next two ads, possibly the most
memorable
of the ten that were made - Airliner and Ski Lodge. Airliner saw the
two
actors on board an aircraft and, after a near-miss for Melissa when
Leonard
crosses his legs, sending his seat table flying, she finally gets her
soaking
when he accidentally hits her seat recline button while she is about to
sip her Cinzano. Ski Lodge has an Alpine setting in which the bungling
buffoon blusters his way through the bar to Melissa, sending two skiers
with legs already in plaster into fits of agony. Within
twelve months two more classics were made, directed by Paul Weiland:
Roller
Disco and Balcony (in the latter, pictured right, Leonard laments
Melissa's
absence, little knowing that the Cinzano pouring from the bottle over
his
hotel balcony is raining down on a bikini-clad Melissa on the balcony
below).
These had such popular appeal that in 1981 there was talk of a feature
film. Of course, this would have had to involve some kind of
relationship
between Leonard and Melissa, whereas the commercials portrayed no
relationship
whatsoever - he merely wanted her to think he was 'in
the in-crowd'. As
Leonard himself said in an interview with the Sunday Mirror: "If the
scripts
for the film that we make together were to be 10% funny and 90%
romantic,
it would deny the expectations of the audience. It is the fact that we
are so disparate that makes us interesting and intriguing. In the film,
if the girl were a scrubber it wouldn't work. And it wouldn't work if I
were upper-crust." So the
idea for a film was scrapped, and the British public were instead
treated
to Mime, the eighth Cinzano commercial, this time under the direction
of
Peter Levelle. In 1983, Cinzano's manufacturers decided to focus on a
global
promotional strategy, rather than country-specific, and so the UK
adverts
ended - but not before two final gems graced our screens. In 1982,
Tiger's
Head (pictured below) saw Leonard jump with fright after placing his
foot
into the mouth of a tiger-skin's head hearth rug, jerking his cold
collation,
as usual, down Melissa's cleavage. They were entertaining three
Japanese
businessmen at the time and, thinking the unusual deposit was some kind
of formal greeting - and not wanting to offend their hosts - the
visitors
promptly followed suit, jumping in the air and throwing their
Cinzanos
over Melissa's bosom. The final commercial, made in 1983, was called
Dragoon,
and took place at a high society fancy dress ball. Leonard mistakes
someone
else for Melissa. When she does arrive, he tells her she has a double,
and promptly disposes two shakes of his drink down her cleavage. These
last two adverts were directed by Terry
Lovelock: "There was great respect between them", Terry recalls. "They
worked together wonderfully well, and it was a very successful
campaign."
Off-screen, it has to be said that there was at least some friction
between
the two actors. Leonard's tendency to 'take charge' in a production no
doubt caused some conflicts between himself and his leading lady. In a
1984 TV interview, Leonard is asked how he got on with Joan. He
replies:
"We got on very well.. Well, not very well. We got on quite
well." As if
to cement the Cinzano commercials in the British television Hall of
Fame,
the British viewers voted the ads Favourite Commercial in the TVTimes
Top
Ten Awards for 1983, and Leonard himself won an award for Best Actor In
A Commercial. For a storyline which was basically the same in every
commercial,
with only the situations changing from one ad to the next, the Cinzano
ads were one of the greatest - and most successful - television
promotional
campaigns of all time. As director Alan Parker says: "It worked. Boy
did
it work. There was a period of time when the commercials were far and
away
the most interesting thing you could see that evening on television.
They
were infinitely more entertaining than any of the programmes in those
days."

The commercials
remembered:"The Cinzano commercials,
in which Leonard so relentlessly poured Vermouth all over Joan Collins,
were little comic classics in their own right. They were witty,
memorable
vignettes, the running gag being beautifully timed... Commercials often
make actors popular, but there is no doubt that the Cinzano commercials
actually enhanced Leonard's reputation as an actor. The accident-prone
lounge lizard, a self-satisfied bore, inevitably with such constant
exposure
(ten advertisements over a five year period) became one of Leonard's
most
famous characters. He made the clumsy buffoon's phoney bonhomie, and
ridiculous
pretensions to a sophistication he so singularly lacked, very funny.
Trying
to impress us with his worldliness and his knowledge of wines and
foreign
languages, he invariably confirmed, in every word and gesture, his
ignorance,
boorishness and ineptness." - Robert Tanitch.

"In 1978 I made two
amusing,
tongue-in-cheek commercials for Cinzano with the incredibly skilled
Leonard
Rossiter. They were so successful that we made two or three each year
until
1983. Leonard was such a brilliant comedian that when rehearsing with
him
my main problem was to stop shrieking with laughter! His comedy timing
ws superb, wacky, iconoclastic, and slightly different on every take -
the true sign of a marvellous actor. I played a glamorous
'femme-du-monde'
to Leonard's buffoon...""I have to admit I'd never
heard of Leonard Rossiter until my agent called me and said 'Would you
like to do a commercial with Leonard Rossiter?' I was in America at the
time doing Dynasty, and I said 'Who's Leonard Rossiter?' It was
terribly
ignorant of me.""The
first time we rehearsed I was a little bit in awe of him because I
thought
he was a genius comic, as well as a very good actor. He was a bit shy
of
me, and I was a bit shy of him." "I never found him demanding to
anyone,
other than himself." "I was asked to do
one television commercial for Cinzano, which was one of three. I asked
who was doing the other two, and they said possibly Joanna Lumley,
possibly
Felicity Kendall, but I did the first one. When we'd finished there was
a huddle in the corner, all the bigwigs whispering. Finally they came
over
and said 'Would you like to do two more?'. And they ran for six years!""He always had a spin on
the end of his line, so that it would be just that bit different from
the
take before, so that he would make me laugh." - Joan Collins.

"Leonard was a great,
close
friend. He said to me once: "What's it like getting this 'Schhh... You
Know Who'? How do you live with it? What's it really like?" And
I said "It's like... a mortgage, education for three children, a home
for
my ex-wife, a home for my parents and a home for me. That's what it's
actually
like. And if you're not very careful, it might happen to you one day.""
- William Franklyn, actor. Starred in Schweppes' 1970s ad campaign.

"Leonard Rossiter, from
the
theatre - difficult. He felt he was 'the main man', the artist of the
two.
He used to choreograph himself. I know the previous director had some
trouble
with this, so I had to spend some time with him, just to diffuse what I
thought might be some awkward situations. And there was. He'd say "I'm
doing this movement, and that movement" and "It'd be nice for the
camera
to see this and see that". And I said, "Well, I'm going to cut to your
foot going in the tiger-skin head on the floor", and he said "Oh, but
they
won't be able to see what I'm doing with the rest of me". Joan was
thoroughly
professional, she got the idea straight away. She was very intelligent
and absolutely unpretentious...Leonard used to refer to her as 'The
Prop'."
- Terry Lovelock, director, Tiger's Head and Dragoon commercials.

"When the client
reluctantly
fired us on orders from World Headquarters because they wanted a
worldwide
advertising campaign, Leonard invited the creators of the most recent
productions
to Tante Claire, generally regarded as London's finest restaurant, for
lunch. An unprecedented act of great generosity." - John Salmon,
chairman,
Collett, Dickenson, Pearse and Partners advertising agency.